One of the many things that photographs do is to function as mirrors, reflecting ordinary and everyday human behavior.  And because they have the capacity to stop action, they invite us to contemplate what we regularly take for granted.  Sometimes, however, they capture the exotic, or the down right bizarre, inviting us to meditate on the ordinary as it is “reflected” by the  extraordinary. Nonhuman animals, whether wild or domesticated, often stand in for humans, embodying and performing all manner of emotions (like compassion), affects (like raw fear), and norms that invite a more complex or revealing understanding of the “human condition” than we might get by looking at humans alone.  The photograph above is a minor case in point.  The scene is in Kuala Lumpur; the monkey, who is the focus of the image and wears the flag of the People’s Justice Party, rests on a motorcycle and attends to a speech by Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the Malaysian opposition.  The monkey wears the flag of the opposition party, so we can assume he (?) is a supporter, but more to the point, is that he is altogether other-directed, respectful of and attentive to the speaker.  A somewhat rare thing in this day and age.   And not just attentive, but contemplative, as he appears to listen with care, weighing each and every word spoken. While only a domesticated animal he nevertheless seems to be a mature model of civic decorum.

By contrast, the photograph below tells a different story.

Here we have Aaron Schock, the representative from Illinois’ 18^th District and the youngest member of the House of Representatives.  He is intently reading the April issue of Washington Life magazine, which advertises itself as “D.C. Metro area’s premiere guide to luxury, power, philanthropy, and style.” There is no way to tell what in particular has captured his attention, but one of the featured articles this month discusses how to beat the stress of tax day and perhaps that is what has him so entranced.  Or maybe it is the fashion report on “Barbie’s new Swag.”  Whatever it might be, it must be pretty important given that just outside of the frame of the picture Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is testifying to the House Ways and Means Committee on Medicare spending.  Given that Schock serves on the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security one would think that he would be concerned about issues related to health care spending for the aged—particularly given the prevailing attitude of House Republicans towards budgeted funding for social welfare programs—and thus would attend carefully to the testimony before engaging the Secretary in dialogue; or at the least we might think that he would show some respect for the speaker as a matter of civic decorum in the most important legislative assembly in the nation.  But apparently we would be wrong in making either assumption, or at least that is what the photograph would invite us to consider. What the mirror here reflects is a self-indulgent and rude individual who appears to show no concern for the gravity of his office or those he serves.

Placed side-by-side the two photographs mirror the extraordinary and the ordinary. Upon reflection it is not clear which is which.  But the only real question is: with which are we willing to identify?

Photo Credit:  Mohd Rasfan/AFP/Getty Images; J. Scott Applewhite/AP

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The “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart,” aka The Berlin Wall, perhaps the preeminent icon of the Cold War, came down officially in 1989.  Photographs at the time featured throngs of individuals standing on the wall and around it, many using hammers and pick axes to destroy it.  Images of large scale demolition followed and as time has passed we have seen photographs of the wall converted into relics of a distant time and place—who would like to buy a piece of the wall for display in their living room?—or of specific locations such as the famous Checkpoint Charlie paved over with hot dog stands and tourist attractions.

The largest remnant of the wall is a nearly mile long section along the Spree River known as the East Side Gallery on which artists have painted murals—105 paintings in all—marking Germany’s history and the movement to freedom that culminated in 1989.  It is by some accounts the largest outdoor gallery in the world and something of a memorial to its own creation, its vibrant colors a marker of individualism and freedom and a stark contrast to the drab gray of the walls that it covers and which served as the institutional aesthetic of the Soviet Bloc authoritarian political culture that it supplanted.

But alas, the forces of progress known no bounds, as in the recent image above in which heavy industrial equipment is being used to eliminate a large section of the wall to make way for an access road to luxury apartments that are being built nearby.  Where once “the people” thronged to tear down a drab, authoritarian wall in the name of democracy—and, one might assume, the ideology of free markets—the forces of democracy and free markets now conspire to eliminate the colorful vestiges of the freedom that animated it in the first place.

And so we have the photograph below.

Portions of the wall that contain the East Side Galley have been torn down, only to be replaced by drab, industrial grey barriers that gate the pathway to the development of capitalist development.  The only colors that stand out are those of a  woman wearing a red beret and a colorful scarf.  She holds a yellow rose, an international symbol of friendship, but in Germanic cultures also a symbol of jealousy and the fear and insecurity attendant to an anticipated loss.  Individual freedom and a different version of institutional control are once again at odds with one another   And one can only wonder if she isn’t contemplating the opening lines to Karl Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, “Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were twice.  He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”

Photo Credits: Britta Pedersen/DPA via AP; Carsten Koall/Getty Images

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I spent much way too much  of the morning yesterday listening to the Sunday talk shoes where the primary topic of discussion concerned the role that government should play in regulating our lives.  Gay marriage, sugared water, and guns were the focus, but at its heart the real concern was whether the state should guarantee liberty and freedom or public order.  What all seemed to forget (or ignore) was that this is not a simple opposition that can or should be resolved easily or once and for all in one direction to the exclusion of the other.  A world in which all are free to do whatever they want has a name (anarchy), as does a world in which there is total order and control (fascism) and neither is particularly salutary.  Indeed, what makes liberal democracy such a difficult and precarious political institution is that it sits on a rather narrow precipice between the two, its success dependent on the necessity of maintaining equilibrium between liberty and order and predicated on some measure of public trust in the institutions that administer that balance.  And therein lies the real problem, for at the current moment our political institutions suffer from a deficit of public trust.

The photograph above appeared randomly in one of the daily slideshows yesterday afternoon, and in its way it displays a simple model of how government regulations often work effectively in the background and how they rely upon public trust to manage the tension between liberty and order.  Without stop lights our public thoroughfares would be both chaotic and a hazard to vehicles and pedestrians alike.  The regulation of traffic through alternating signals to “stop” and “go” make it possible for all to use the roads equitably and in a manner that is both orderly and safe.  Shut at dusk and in a snow storm tinged haze that otherwise makes visibility problematic, the alternating red and green lights mark the normal rhythm of the thoroughfare, designating zones of free movement and public safety.  And as the image above indicates, the traffic seems to move pretty well.

What makes the system work, of course, is the trust that one has in the system itself: a trust that the regulations maximize both the flow of traffic and the safety of all; a trust that the regulations recognize and address the competing interests of all in more or less equitable terms—or when equity is sacrificed that it is done for reasons that serve a compelling public interest; and perhaps most importantly, a trust that pedestrians and vehicles will both honor the regulations, yielding to the other as the rule of law dictates.  Without such trust the regulations themselves will fail and the legitimacy of the system itself will be at risk.  The potential problem is gestured to in the above photograph as we see pedestrians who appear to be crossing against the light and thus challenging the rule of law. There is no traffic in the foreground and so it would seem like they are safe and that, at least in this instance, they do not impede the public order.  Perhaps they have good reasons for their transgression and we should certainly be willing to take that into account.  That, after all, is what we have the courts for.  Still, the presumption is against them, and their refusal to follow the rules is both a clear threat to the prevailing institutions of law and a reminder that we need someone to be responsible for making sure that the regulations are upheld in order to secure the public trust. Without both our streets would be neither free nor orderly.

The point to be made is that the problem of government regulation writ large, rather like the problem of regulating traffic, is never as simple as the relationship between stop and go.  It also requires a profound trust in the rule of law that animates such regulation as well as those who work to manage and maintain the complex tension between liberty and order without sacrificing one to the other—or imagining that such a sacrifice could ever be in the best interests of the larger society.

Photo Credit:  Charlie Riedel/AP

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